API Yapily ranked European countries on a 10-point scale based on how well they encourage open banking (OB) adoption, per its press release. To create the league table, the fintech compared levels of regulatory supervision and enforcement, the existence of API standards, bank readiness, and more.
The league table identifies clearly communicated regulatory guidelines and common API messaging standards as the main factors that accelerated OB adoption.
The adoption discrepancies could hinder the shift to open finance in the EU while the UK surges ahead. Open finance is an extension of OB to more types of financial data, such as pensions, investments, loans, mortgages, insurance, and healthcare. The European Commission plans to propose a Europe-wide open finance framework to be implemented by 2024, but this risks exacerbating existing fragmentation. Member states that are still behind in OB adoption could face interoperability challenges if required to share more financial data. Here, Brexit may work in the UK’s favor—it doesn’t have to wait on the EU to move ahead with its own open finance framework, helping it keep its pole position: The Financial Conduct Authority is currently assessing stakeholders’ views on the transition to open finance.